General Bondi, can we ask you two questions?
Of course.
Get you at the podium.
Each. So --
Podium please if you don't mind? Thank you.
Sure. Hey, before you guys get started, tomorrow, Kash Patel and I will be in South Florida. I don't know if you're tracking that, but it's something that you should want to try.
What's happening there? Can you give a sense of topic and more specific?
Off camera, yes. It's something you -- you would want to attend.
So, I wanted to ask Trump administration attorneys have said that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. I know the Supreme Court just issued that stay deciding whether he should be sent back to the United States. Why does the Justice Department believe that he shouldn't?
Well, first of all, it was an administrative error as to why he was deported and he is a known gang member. ICE testified he was a gang member. And we believe he should stay where he is. You -- you know, the -- the defense had argued that he was -- was a journeyman, that he was training to be an electrician.
Well, the last gang member we arrested who was a violent murderer was also hanging wallpaper in a place called The Villages in Florida, one of the biggest retirement places in our country. So, these people are living among us. One of the big cases we had, I think you're very aware of, half an hour from where we're standing was another violent gang member living right among us in a very, very nice residential neighborhood.
Wreaths on the door, next door to him. Children's bicycles. So, that's what these gangs do. They infiltrate our country and they live among us. So, to say that he was training to be an electrician does not legitimize him from being a violent gang member and we will continue to fight for the safety of Americans and get these people out of our country to make America safe.
Every victim of crime deserves to be safe and these families who have lost loved ones to these -- they are foreign adversaries. They are terrorists and they are living among us no longer, and especially after that ruling yesterday. They better start self-deporting because we're coming after them.
Two quick questions if we can? I'll just ask you about the ruling yesterday from -- from the Supreme Court. Obviously, it allows you to move forward with using the Alien Enemies Act --
Yes.
-- to deport these alleged gang members and others here. It says they're entitled to due process though as well. Your take on the ruling and what does it mean for your ability to deport?
Yes, sure, Peter. What -- what the ruling says is as from yesterday forward, what we can do is we can still deport, but they are entitled to habeas in the court of confinement, which means all of these cases will go through Texas. There will be no more class actions. It will be two questions asked: do you qualify under alien enemies and are you a violent gang member?
Are you a member of TDA? That's what will be asked.
Let me ask you about the DHS. The administration broadly has revoked the legal status of those individuals who came in from south of the border through the CBP app that was produced by the former administration. So, should those individuals who followed the rules as they existed at the time be forced to leave the country now?
Well, Peter, the rules at the time weren't fair. The rules were dangerous to Americans. I went to the border in September. I was in Yuma, Arizona and I saw piles and piles of driver's license, IDs, passports from every country you can imagine, thrown at the gate. They were handed cell phones, the CBP app, what you were discussing.
They could come in, get on -- get on a phone, enter the country. If they didn't have ID, then they could identify that they were from any country they chose to be from. A Border Patrol agent told me, Venezuelan men were coming in saying they were from China. Chinese people were coming in saying they were from any country to Ireland.
Any country they wanted to identify that they were from and they were walking right into our country. So, we have to look at all those cases because that's the safety and concern for our citizens. One other thing at the border is if you are a family, it made it much easier to come into the country. I learned a new term while I was at that border and that was called a disposable child.
Border Patrol agents were seeing children, the same child, coming in time and time again. A little boy, they recognized over and over coming into our country. And they couldn't figure out why. That child had been trafficked and he was posing as a family member. They had kidnaped a child and when they recognized him multiple times, they realized he wasn't part of that family.
So, what was happening at that border was dangerous. I went to a rape crisis center. Nothing at that border was humane and nothing protected American citizens, nor many of the people coming through it because I firmly believe many of those women and children were trafficked.
Attorney General, 60 Minutes found that 75 percent of the immigrants who were sent to El Salvador do not have public criminal records. Is that true?
Do you mean in our country?
The -- the Venezuelan migrants who were sent to [Inaudible]
Okay. Well, they're not Venezuelan migrants. They're illegal aliens from Venezuela who should not have been in our country, who are committing the most violent crimes. So, if you committed a murder in our country, we're going to keep you here and we're going to seek the death penalty and we're going to keep you in prison because our victims' families deserve that.
But we don't have to charge them with every crime. We can deport them and get them out of our country and save room in our prisons, because they should have never been in our country to begin with.
So, you confirm they didn't commit a crime, right?
Thank you.
Is that what you're confirming?
Thanks, guys. Appreciate the time. Thanks, General Bondi. [Inaudible] General.